You’ve heard the adage hundreds of times: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Many DC elected officials and government functionaries have been wearing straitjackets for years.
Consider the policies around homelessness and housing that city officials have advanced over the past 20 years, for example. They have basically required appropriating millions of dollars each year to subsidize construction of new apartments, mostly at 50% to 80% of median income. That range has meant that insignificant numbers of units have been available for very low-income residents, many of whom are on the edge of experiencing homelessness if they lose their jobs and miss a mortgage or rent payment, as happened to thousands during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I have never experienced homelessness. But when I was a young single mother pinched every day for money, I frequently worried about how I was going to pay rent and buy food.
It’s true DC officials used lots of federal and local money during the pandemic to help mitigate such fears, preventing evictions and foreclosures. Those funds have long since run out, however.
Unfortunately, the District has raced back to its flawed, pre-pandemic approach to creating so-called affordable housing. Simultaneously, officials, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, seem to be gutting the few laws, like the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), that have been a bulwark for renters against market forces.
The results of this combination of myopia and insensitivity have been more housing instability and persistent homelessness in the nation’s capital.
That reality was exacerbated during a maddening 100-day assault on America, perpetrated by President Donald Trump. He fired thousands of federal workers and terminated hundreds of contracts, destabilizing the financial foundations for the people affected and their households. He also ordered key members of his administration to plow through homeless encampments in DC, especially those located downtown near the federal enclave.
My complaint about Trump’s actions shouldn’t be interpreted as support for encampments. Unless someone is at a campsite, a tent is no place to call home. Still, everyone deserves to be treated with humanity.
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